


Rain

by doomedship



Category: The Good Doctor (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23982232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomedship/pseuds/doomedship
Summary: It's not always a straight path, but there's usually a way out of the rain. Claire/Neil, tentative steps.
Relationships: Claire Browne/Neil Melendez
Comments: 25
Kudos: 101





	Rain

**Author's Note:**

> And now, watch me overdo the angst to break my fic posting rut. Seriously, this is heavy on the metaphor. Sorry.

1.

She's been through so much. 

It's probably not what anyone expects him to be thinking right now, when he's fresh out of surgery, bandaged and a little sore all over. He's meant to have other things on his mind, but it's really all he can think when he tugs his jacket on and looks up to see her, standing in the doorway of his hospital room with her hands knotted together in front of her. 

Because in her face is written all her pain, all those gentle scars that his near miss with mortality has left on top of all those that went before. 

He feels the sweet, dull ache of tenderness towards her much more keenly than any faint throbbing in his side. 

"Hey," he says gently, and she offers a small smile. 

"Hi," she says, and her voice is a little unsteady. "I just wanted to check on you before you were discharged."

He tilts his head, contemplates her with a quiet smile, and it seems to be the thing that tips her over the edge. 

"Come here," he says, as she tries not to but dissolves into tears, and then he's putting down his bag and opening up his arms to her, letting her collapse into him with her hands tucked under his jacket and clinging tight around his middle.

She's been so strong, right through the night of the earthquake, then through his surgery and the days of agonised waiting, and now it's all over she's finally breaking down. 

She cries quietly against him, and it reminds him so much of the night he stayed with her in the stairwell, the way she tries to contain herself and not make any noise, and he wants to tell her that it's okay, she can just let everything go, that she doesn't always have to be in control with him.

At least he can hold her now, doesn't have to just comfort her from afar, because all the careful walls he used to have in place between them are already stripped away until they're just a distant memory of another world, a time when he didn't feel like she'd already seen and touched half of his very soul.

But God knows it pains him to be a new notch in the long list of things she should never have had to witness. 

He wonders briefly whether if he just holds her tight enough now he'll be able to take it all away. 

After a while she quiets against him, her cheek resting in quiet exhaustion against his shoulder, and he moves his hand in slow, meditative circles between her shoulder blades. She seems to still under his touch, and he's willing to hold her for all eternity if that's what it takes.

He sees Audrey Lim casting a contemplative stare through the glass window as she passes, but he pays her little mind. This moment is Claire's, and there's nobody on earth who could make him let go of her now. 

"Sorry," she whispers, sniffing quietly. She leans back to look up at him, and his eyes are gentle on hers. 

"Don't be," he says, and brushes her tears from the corner of her eye. He feels the whisper of her eyelashes against his fingers as her eyes flicker shut, momentarily, and not for the first time he thinks about telling her exactly what she means to him, just in case she doesn't already know. 

But he holds the words back, barely, and hopes the look in his eyes says to her all the things he's not able to speak out loud.

Her answering smile is bittersweet, and he thinks maybe in her eyes she's telling him the same.

2.

She comes round religiously after her last shift in the week following his discharge. 

The first night she's on his doorstep she's a little nervous, but brazen, pushing past him and telling him she's here to check on him, and also, she's brought dinner, so he'd better let her in.

He just cocks his head and smiles as he stands aside, eyes meeting hers searchingly as she walks into his hallway, laden with carrier bags. 

"I don't cook," she confesses, dumping cartons of soup and salad into his kitchen. "Otherwise I'd have made you something healthy and nutritious."

He laughs, handing her plates and bowls and cutlery like they've done this for years. 

"I thought you would be all over those recipes from Kayla," he says, remembering her in the low light of the locker room that night, clutching that shoebox with her eyes so conflicted and so unsure of everything.

It's only weeks, but it feels like a lifetime and a half ago. As if since then either the world has changed completely, or they have, or maybe a little of both.

She rolls her eyes. "I gave it a go, but let's just say my kitchen has seen better days." 

She sweeps through his kitchen, dishing out food and handing him his, and her presence there definitely doesn't seem out of place.

She seems brighter than she did earlier in the hospital, a little colour back in her cheeks, but she also looks so damn tired he wants to tell her to just lie down and let him take care of her, but he knows the reason she's here is to do that for him and she's not going to accept anything less. 

Once she's decided to look after somebody he knows by now not to mess with her, that she's got protectiveness built deep into her bones and she's stubborn and determined in the way that she cares for everyone around her.

And he can't deny that part of him revels in this attention, fiercely loves this part of her, and frankly never wants to have her out of his sight.

Near death experiences are pretty good for handing out a new perspective on life, and all the people in it, and he's starting to realise that distance is not something he wants from her ever again.

She pulls him into a tight, fierce hug on the doorstep before she leaves that night, and for one exhilarating moment as he's looking down into her warm, sweet, weary face he entertains the idea of asking her to stay. 

"Thanks for dinner," he says instead, and she smiles up at him. 

"Thanks for still being alive."

3.

On the second night she's back again, and he's already made dinner ahead of her. The discovery of this fact makes her pause and smile a thoughtful sort of smile, but she doesn't remark, and sits down with him to eat and her knee keeps brushing against his under the table.

He finds it more distracting than he probably should.

After, she makes him sit on the couch and take off his shirt so she can check on the surgical scar that now runs all the way up from hip to mid abdomen, and apply a fresh dressing.

He protests weakly that he's pretty sure he's got a medical licence too, and he can probably take care of a dressing change himself, but the look she gives him both makes him laugh and surrender immediately. 

He thinks maybe she's had that effect on him for a while now. 

She's convincing in her professionalism as she works, her brow slightly furrowed in concentration as she unpeels the layers of gauze and tape, but he catches her eye when she's done removing the bandage and he doesn't miss the way her cheeks heat and her eyes roam as she sits back on the couch. 

He watches as they settle on the long, ragged scar, still so fresh and tender with the stitches leaping out of angry red skin. 

Still a sign of how bad things could have been.

And then she looks so torn up again, and he thinks he'd do anything to make that look go away. 

"Hey," he says, and her eyes flick back to his, dark and heavy in the way they fix on him. He reaches out for her hand and smiles, and it's a smile he doesn't really give to anyone else.

It's one that says a thousand things he never dares to speak.

She looks down, watching his thumb stroke over the back of her hand and she has a strange, tender, fierce look in her eyes as she slowly lifts it, and presses it gently against the skin over his heart, her fingers just brushing the intricate lines of his tattoo. 

"I thought you were going to die," she says, the words bald and ugly hanging in the air between them. He nods slowly, and he knows she can feel his heart thudding steadily under her palm, as if in direct protest against the ghost of his death still hanging over her head. 

"I know," he says. And he's sorry, then, for adding to her pain, for giving fresh mileage to her old fears that opening up to somebody will only get her hurt. 

But despite the tears that spring to her eyes she grows still and quiet, her hand still resting on his chest.

"I love you," she says, and it's just such a plain and simple confession, so straightforward in its conviction that it seems like the world stills and says of course, she loves him, and he loves her too. 

It's like the earth turning on its axis, all at once a slow and steady constant and a titanic speeding force that drives their lives to seismic change. 

He takes her hand and presses a slow kiss to her palm. 

"I know."

4.

She lies in his arms at daybreak. 

There's a faint thread of inevitability hanging wisp-like in the air around them as he holds her, one arm on top of hers and curled protectively around her body. He can feel the slow rise and fall of her breathing, and the way that every line of her body matches up against his.

They're both dressed, cocooned under the tangle of his bedsheets. She's wearing one of his old college shirts and it feels like it could be 1998 and he's falling in love for the first time all over again. 

It's not as if anything else happened between them last night, no sudden outbreak of fireworks leading to a trail of clothing on his living room floor. Instead they merely slept, exhaustion and emotion taking over and letting them cling together like children in the night. 

But it felt completely right to do that. 

The truth is that kind of reckless is not what either of them needs, not for now, even if some part of him might fiercely want it whenever he feels her skin under his fingertips. Because he is so aware that he can still feel the hurting in her, fresh and raw, and he knows that she needs time.

Time to process what she's feeling and to come to terms with the storm they've both just weathered. 

Time to figure out if this is really what she wants.

He knows there's been something between them growing for months like wildflowers under summer rain, but the agonising jolt of him almost dying has left a strange, dangerous new landscape in front of them and he doesn't know whether the path through it is sound. 

But none of that stops him from pulling her closer to him as the quiet sunrise disturbs their temporary peace, and she turns over in his arms to face him, her hand finding the back of his head.

"I should get up," she says. "I have to go home before I go to work."

"Okay," he replies, lifting his arm, but she makes no effort to move. So he laughs and reaches out, tucks her hair behind her ear, and she smiles a little, that complicated look in her eyes again.

He thinks he could wake up to her every day for a hundred years and never get tired of the intricacies he finds in her expression. 

"You need to rest today," she says, running a gentle hand over his bandaged side. She sighs as she sits up, the sheet falling to her waist. He remains lying down, looking up at the sight of her just in one of his shirts, hair tossed carelessly over one shoulder, and it's like a glimpse of some forbidden future he never thought he would ever get to witness. 

And he already knew it, but it's still impossible not to stop and notice just how beautiful she is. 

"I'll pick something up for dinner," she says, and he smiles at her as he lays back, watching her strip off his shirt and pull her clothes back on without a hint of embarrassment. 

She perches back on the edge of the bed and leans over to kiss his cheek, and he's okay with it when she finally leaves, because the subtext is always that she's coming back. 

  
5.

Things change the third time she stays over. 

She comes in late, tired and annoyed by something that happened at work and missing his support in the OR, and she's fierce and tense and unpredictable against him as she leans into his body and exhales slowly. 

"Sometimes I just want to get away from all of it," she mumbles against his chest. His hand makes its way to the back of her head, meaning to comfort her but she takes in a long breath and makes a small sound of pleasure as he tangles his fingers idly through her hair.

She looks up at him slowly, with eyes that seem suddenly fever bright, and he's surprised when she moves in closer, but just waits, curious about where she means to go with this. Since she stayed over the simmering tension between them has had them dancing on the very edge of that cliff, but still they haven't quite fallen. 

Her eyes drop to his lips, and he wonders if it's time to jump.

And then he stops thinking altogether when she presses her lips against his, slow and experimental at first, like she's testing the water, but it doesn't take long for that kiss to become something else, something crackling with all the unspent energy of three years of mounting desire. 

In that moment it's like he has vivid flashbacks of every charged moment, every time he's ever wanted to grab her and pin her against the wall or an on call bed or his own damn desk in the years that he's been working alongside her, forced to reckon with that inexplicable pull he's always felt towards her even when he's been with other people and she's been so entirely out of bounds.

And each one of those past moments where he stopped himself from touching her comes surging to the fore and fuels him as he grips her hips, lips fused to hers, and walks her backwards down the hallway and into the bedroom where she's carelessly yanking off their shirts and she's got her lips pressing at his throat while he's preoccupied with unbuttoning her jeans.

It takes a gargantuan effort to stop himself from just pushing her down onto the bed and forgetting all reason when she's got her hands under his waistband and she's biting down on the join of his neck and shoulder and his heart is beating so hard in his chest he wonders if she can feel it too.

But this is one thing he has to be sure about. 

"Claire," he says, his voice ragged. She lifts her head and he meets her dark, heady stare, searching her for any flicker of doubt. A faint recognition creeps into her expression as she realises what he's asking; she bites down on her lip and it's almost enough to make him forget all about the sensible thing.

"I want this," she says, low and husky and unrepentant. "I want you. I always have."

She leans in and kisses him, hard.

And her fingers are working at the nape of his neck and her lips return to his jaw and suddenly, suddenly, he's all out of questions. 

He tugs the denim from her body along with everything else, and then he's pulling her down to the bed with him and it feels like taking a breathful of air after being trapped under deep water for far too long. 

It feels like fire, burning out the memory of anyone who was ever there before her. 

She's noisy and she's beautiful and it's like nothing and everything he could ever have imagined all at once, the gossamer touch of her skin on his and the breathless cry he wins from her lips when she's throwing her head back and coming apart under him. 

There are tear tracks down her cheeks afterwards, her eyes closed on the pillow as he thumbs the moisture away. 

She opens her eyes and breathes him in and for a second the world seems to be exactly as it should be. 

6.

A couple of weeks pass, and Claire proves to be as habit forming as any drug he's ever dished out. 

The first days are navigating in the dark, a rapid recalculation of everything he thought he knew about the world and the order of things in it. Both of them unsure, afraid of getting it wrong and so, so tentative.

And there's always been so much background noise in their lives; her pager going off, his phone, Audrey Lim knocking on his door to check on him while Claire runs to hide half-naked in his bedroom. 

But somehow all of that just adds up to him buying groceries for two, making dinner together and finding out that yeah, she really doesn't cook. But it's fine, because he does, and when she looks across the table at him with her mischievous bright eyes it makes all the background noise fade rapidly to silence until there's nothing else but her.

More often than not she's sleeping over, and they haven't talked about that but he's not complaining; they lie together with the cool air drying their skin in their secluded bubble of sex and whispered words and the incomparable rush that comes with the first hedonistic days of brand new intimacy.

And honestly, he's awestruck by the mere fact that he gets to just to lie there next to her and listen to her quiet breathing growing deep and slow before he falls asleep too. 

He soon discovers that she's a restless sleeper, though, usually stirring at least once in the night. She in turn finds out that whenever she wakes up, he does too, and he never minds her stretching out a hand to brush against him, a whispered touch like she's memorising the feel every line of his body lying in parallel to hers. 

He thinks she has nightmares, but she never says. He doesn't ask either, though he wants to, but it comes out anyway when one night she wakes up panicking in the middle of the night.

He's jolted awake and disoriented for a second, then realises what's happening in the next. He sits up and turns on the light, one arm reaching for her, and she's suddenly gripping his wrist tightly as her breathing slows and her wide, frightened eyes slowly fixate on him in the abrupt half light. 

"I..." she says, that one syllable rough and shaken. "Sorry." 

She lets go of him suddenly, drawing her arms tight around herself but he follows, shifting his body so he's facing her. 

It's raining outside, and the soft patter against the windowpanes is rhythmic and somber.

"Want to talk about it?" he asks, reaching out a careful, soft hand to brush against her knee. 

She shakes her head silently, but then she's looking back at him and she's crawling across the bed to place herself bodily in his arms, hers winding tight around his neck as she breathes in deeply, cheek pressed tight against his skin. 

She doesn't tell him what she dreamt about, but he thinks he can guess, and he lies there with her head on his shoulder, running his fingers through her hair until she's calm enough to sleep again. 

But the morning, he turns over to see she's not in the bed. 

She's not anywhere else, either. 

  
7\. 

He gets a text later, saying she's sorry, she's fine, she just needs to go somewhere to figure her head out. Don't wait for me, she writes.  
  
He realises he's not actually that surprised that she's gone, even though it fucking hurts to realise after enough time passes that what she's saying is that she's not coming back. Because he thinks he's known for some time that since his accident there's been something so profoundly shaken in her that she needs to work out, and it's a place of reckoning that even he can't follow her into. 

Her departure leaves a hole in his life, though, and it's pretty obvious he's not going to be able to fill it with other things when the shape of it has become so precisely aligned to her and her alone. But he resolves to give her the space she's asked for, and tries not to think about what it'll feel like if she decides she's never coming back. 

He can't run because of his still-healing wound, but he goes for a walk in the morning when the sky is gunmetal grey and the air is thick with humidity from the gathering rain. 

He sits down on a park bench, and wonders if it's just his fate to watch the people he loves walk away. 

He slowly gets on with things, reading surgical articles during the day and doing his best to keep up to speed, though he's still got at least two more weeks of medical leave. He's bored and restless, but he gets by, and does his utmost to ignore the compulsive urge to contact Claire and check she's okay. He doesn't hear from her.

He gets a call from Jessica, unexpectedly, a week after Claire left. It's a strange jolt from the past, and he realises it's been a long time since he thought about her, but he's kind of pleased to hear her voice. 

"I heard you almost died," she says reprimandingly. "I know we agreed not to be all up in each other's business, but that sort of seems like it could have been worth a heads up."

He laughs a little, and apologises. "There's been a lot going on," he says. 

"Well, maybe you can tell me about it over dinner tomorrow?" she says. And he sits back and thinks for a second. 

"Sure," he says, and figures seeing her can't exactly hurt him more than what he's already feeling. 

So he meets her somewhere neutral, equidistant between their respective homes and lives. She's already at the table when he arrives, and she smiles warmly and kisses his cheek. Her hair is shorter now. 

"It's good to see you," he says sincerely, and she looks a little wistful then, but not enough to make him worry. It's reassuring, he thinks, the way this feels a little nostalgic, a little strange, but not painful. Not like pressing an open wound. 

That pain is reserved for somebody else. 

"I'm glad you're all in one piece," Jessica says, after they order sushi and glasses of wine. "But you don't seem as happy as a man who's cheated death ought to be."

He looks at her then with a wry smile, realising now that this is the downside of meeting up with a woman he was once on track to marry. She still knows him far too well to miss the signs, and he doesn't even feel like hiding them. 

"There's... complications," he replies, cocking an eyebrow. Jessica raises her own. 

"What's her name?" she says, not missing a beat, and he rolls his eyes at how she's always this direct. 

"It's Claire."

Her eyebrows go even higher, and she reaches for her wine. 

"Okay," she says. "That I did not see coming."

  
8.

He feels a bit less burdened after dinner with Jessica. 

It's good to talk to somebody who's not connected to the hospital anymore, somebody who doesn't really care about the politics. She's been out of touch with everyone except Glassman for a while now, and she looks at him with as impartial an eye as he's likely to get. 

She doesn't exactly say that what's going on us right, but she doesn't say it's wrong either. She seems concerned for him, and he can't really blame her.

"She's really done a number on you, huh?" she says, as they say goodbye on the street outside the restaurant. 

"It's not her fault," he says, and he means it, a touch of loss and bitterness in the smile he gives, but it's mostly just a longing he feels. The truth is he doesn't blame Claire, not really, and the hardest part is only missing her. 

He wonders if that'll ever go away, or if it's as permanent as the lines that mark his slowly healing flesh. 

"Just... look after yourself," Jessica says meaningfully, and he inclines his head as she climbs into her cab. 

She means well, but she doesn't know Claire. She doesn't even really know him either, not anymore. She's got the impression of the man he was with her, but not the one he's become, and though her advice is sound, it leaves him none the wiser. Claire is still on his mind like a favourite song he's got on repeat, and he's starting to think it might be the last track he ever plays. 

He gets his stitches out at the hospital later that week, and the rawness of the wound is fading.

From what he knows of love and loss, if he's lucky then he'll probably be able to say the same about Claire in days to come. 

From what he knows, the circling waves of regret and confusion will become a bearable level of suffering, and someday he might eventually stop thinking about this. 

But it just doesn't feel like it now, and the melancholy is as oppressive as the heavy grey clouds that swirl overhead. It feels like the sun hasn't been out for weeks and then it's raining again, the murky puddles collecting on the uneven pavement leading to his front door. 

He doesn't want to forget her. 

Once he gets out of his car he makes a dash for it through the downpour, crossing the driveway at a jog, and then suddenly he's drawn up short. 

Because on the doorstep is a very wet, very bedraggled Claire Browne. 

He stops and stares at the bottom of the porch, and the rain runs down his skin like a shivering caress. 

"Hi," she says in the first breath. 

"I'm so sorry," she says in the next. 

He looks her up and down, her hair plastered to her head in dripping rat-tails and the thin coat she's wearing doing nothing to keep her clothes from soaking through to her skin. 

He doesn't say anything, and walks inscrutably past her to open his front door. He can almost feel the tension in her as he brushes by, catching her agonised expression in the corner of his eye as he slowly turns back to her. 

"You'd better come in," he says, and something like pure relief overtakes her face. 

  
9.

He stands opposite her on the other side of his kitchen island and she's wearing his shirt again. 

The level of deja vu is almost amusing, but not quite, and he doesn't exactly know how to feel with her sitting there watching him with eyes about as sad as he feels. Wordlessly, he puts a cup of steaming tea in front of her, and looks on as she accepts it quietly.

He still can't stop himself from wanting to tend to her; it's like that part of him is hardwired in, the need to look out for her and keep her from getting hurt. 

It's just he doesn't have a clue what he's meant to do when he's the one getting hurt. 

"Are you going to tell me what happened?" he asks levelly, and it's a genuine question, not a guilt trip. He wants to know the answer, but he's not going to make her give it, and his tone is quiet and steady despite the nervous energy he can feel coursing through him. 

It makes his side throb. 

She looks at him and nods tightly, blinking rapidly to fight back tears that she's not willing to let fall. She opens her mouth but seems to struggle, and she gives a tiny shake of her head before finally she locks eyes with him over the countertop and a quiet acceptance falls over her face. 

"I don't think I know how to be with somebody I love," she says slowly, and looks at him with something foundering halfway between grief and guilt. "Not without hurting them. Or getting hurt.

He digests that; it's a strange concept to his ears. Love comes relatively easily to him, and the idea of running from someone he loves is not one he's ever encountered. 

But as he looks her over, at the shadows he sometimes sees behind those cautious eyes, he realises that for her, love and pain have always, always been intertwined, and in her whole life she has never had anyone show her how it can be otherwise. She has always been hurting, and getting hurt.

She told him once before, how she's never been truly happy in love. 

"I left because I didn't want to see how it ended with you," she says, and then she gives a tiny shake of her head, her hair dark and heavy with the rainwater that's making damp patches on her borrowed shirt. 

He inhales slowly, and after a long moment he gets to his feet and pulls a towel from a kitchen drawer, and walks around behind her. 

He gathers up her wet hair behind her neck and wraps the towel around the ends, tucking it securely over her shoulder. She turns her body all the way round to face him, trepidation in the way she stares up at him, and he just looks back at her for a long moment before he lets his breath out all at once and brushes his thumb over her cheek. 

"You came back," he says quietly, and she leans her cheek into his palm and her eyelids flicker before she fixes her eyes on his.

"I know," she murmurs, and maybe he's crazy and desperate but it feels like there's promise behind the words. 

"I love you," he says simply, because it's true, and it's never going to change. 

There's a long, powerful pause, and her eyes wash with tears.

"I know," she whispers back, and he thinks maybe finally, this time, that might be true as well. 

So he dips his head and kisses her slowly, and marvels at how she tastes like the rain.

  
10.

He's cautious from that afternoon, after he's put her in a hot shower and wrapped her in his clothes and told her that she doesn't have to stay, but God knows he wants her to. 

The rose tinted glasses have to come off a little, but what he's left with is a slow burn kind of reality that's smoky and seductive in a way that smooth romance has never been. It's new and intriguing as much as it is terrifying.

But there's always been a depth to him and Claire that lends him courage, even when he doubts, because with her it's always been a meeting of souls that he's never experienced with anyone else. It's like every part of him is custom made to fit her, and he knows deep down that from now on, and maybe even from long ago, no one else will do.

And he thinks she's finally starting to believe that she can be with him without her world imploding. 

So she does stay, and they go back to spending long evenings, warm nights, wrapped up so close together it's like they've never been apart. At first he's always a little afraid of waking up in the morning and finding her gone, but if anything he finds she starts to lie closer to him. To hold his hand a little tighter if she ever wakes up in the dark, and needs to know she's not alone. 

And then one night it's thundering outside, and neither of them can sleep because the rain is pounding so hard on the windowpanes it sounds like the house might fall. It makes her a little uneasy, he can tell, shifting around in the bed next to him so he turns onto his side and places a hand over her hip, gentle and reassuring.

She turns over too, and lies with him, her face so close to his he can feel her gentle breaths on his skin before she leans in, her lips finding his in the darkened room. 

She is hesitant with him at first. 

It's a slow reconnection, her hands starting off chastely on his chest before starting to roam, and he feels the familiar beat of his rising longing for her, a fierce and uninhibited wanting that dissipates all his reticence and pushes him to tumble her onto her back and kiss her hard, until she's panting his name and pleading with him to give her everything. 

The lightning flashes outside and for a brief moment he gets her in striking relief, lips parted and eyes lit with sudden blue-tinted luminescence, and as the thunder rolls through the sky he knows that this is final. 

Because she could go anywhere and he would love her anyway. 

But the look she gives him when he's got his hands in hers pinned above her head and they're as close to each other as two people can be makes him pretty sure she means it when she wraps her legs around him and tells him that she's his. 

And then later he lies drowsily with her in his arms until the rain dies down to a soft patter on the roof, and he looks at her looking back at him, and there's a moment of quiet conviction between them that's somehow the graceful denouement of all their troubles, the strange sort of moment where they've come full circle and ended up exactly where they're supposed to be.

"I'm not going anywhere," she tells him sleepily, and the corners of his mouth lift.

"Me neither," he says, and she sighs and presses herself closer before she falls asleep. 

11.

At last the rain stops, and everything is verdant and green. 

The cool crisp air wraps around him like an old blanket, and he feels its breath fill his lungs standing on the tiny balcony outside the bedroom. 

He lets the breeze carry the scent of rain into the room, and Claire stirs under the white sheets like some kind of being in an ancient myth, drawn from sleep into the bright midmorning light.

It's quiet on a day in the middle of the week; a rare time when she's off because she's been on nights and she's overdue a break. He's let her sleep in, and he finds it hard to tear his eyes away from her. 

He's going to be back at work soon too, and that's a whole other maze they're going to have to navigate. But for the moment, everything is peaceful, with her in his bed and him standing there looking around at the shimmering wet leaves on trees which still stand tall despite the battering of the storm. 

He feels her presence next to him before he even realises that she's left the bed; her shoulder brushes his and he turns, smiles widely at the sight of her wrapped in a white blanket and nothing else, the bright glow of the pale sky lighting up every ethereal line of her.

He stretches out an arm and she slides in under it, one hand holding up the blanket and the other sliding around his waist and pinning her to him, her body seeking out his warmth as his hand finds her shoulder and his lips press gently against her hair.

They stand like that for what seems like an age, until she shivers in the wind and he turns to face her. 

"Where do we go from here?" she says, looking up at him, her open expression calm and unhurried. 

He smiles.

He doesn't really know the answer, but his fingers find hers in the space between them and as if in reply they hold on tight. 

It's never easy in relationships even when the premise is straightforward, but standing there holding her hand in the clean, new air after the storm seems like as good a place to start as any. 


End file.
